Chapter Twenty-Eight
LUKE
Mila’s words, mixed with the PI report, stayed under my skin the whole walk to the rink.
Dunn deposits. Darren’s house sold. Money tucked away neatly.
No withdrawals. Her mom destroying something in their kitchen.
And the name—Langley—threading through all of it, thin as fishing line, invisible until it cut your hand.
And there was Avery—slipped a drug at Tori’s party. That wasn’t rumor. That was one of us hurt, and Elise had been at the center of it.
By the time I hit the rubber mat that led onto the ice, my jaw ached.
I shoved my feet into the skates hard enough that my ankle protested.
The locker room noise washed over me—sticks rapping benches, jokes tossed around, the humid funk of gear that never really dried.
Every step led toward whatever Elise had started—the people she’d attempted to break and the risk she’d put on Mila’s shoulders.
Theo clocked my face and didn’t ask—just nudged a water bottle toward me at the gate.
“I’m fine,” I muttered. But tensions were high.
With me. And with Chase. Even though he’d accepted his sister and Jax being together, what had happened to Avery at Tori’s party was dangerous.
I got it. I just couldn’t shake my own frustrations.
And from the expression he wore, he couldn’t shake his either.
Theo didn’t argue. He knew a lie when he heard it. He stepped onto the ice, easy and balanced, and I followed with blades biting.
The cold cut through me, and for a minute, it cleared the noise. The rink stretched wide and merciless under the lights, every inch daring me to slip.
Coach’s whistle shrieked. We dropped into lines, drills designed to set lungs on fire.
Chase cut in fast on my left, sharp as a blade turned the wrong way. He didn’t look at me. He hadn’t looked at Jax all day either unless he had to. Avery’s face in the hospital last night had carved through him. I could still see the shadows it left behind.
Chase had seen his sister at the hospital. Elise didn’t just hurt one person—she worked a long game to push, isolate, and turn people against each other until someone cracked.
Another whistle. We reset. Start-stop sprints that burned. My chest did too.
The thought landed mid-circle: Lorne would neutralize a Dunn plant within King. Neutralize. What a pretty word for what it meant.
I stumbled out of the turn and clipped Chase’s heel. He spun, fist already up. I caught his wrist mid-swing, grip iron.
“Stay in your lane,” I ground out. “This isn’t about you, Chase. It’s what happened to Avery. It’s what Elise did to one of ours.”
His eyes flared, but the fire banked as he took a measured breath. None of us were angry at each other. We were just bleeding out against what we couldn’t fix.
“Enough,” Jax snapped from behind us, voice a rasp that cut. He wasn’t near enough to make contact, but it seemed as though he was. “We don’t do this here.”
We. Don’t. The words cooled me half a degree. I let go of Chase, and he yanked his arm back, breathing hard.
Coach’s whistle split the air. “Again!”
We went again. Skates cut hard into the ice as it shaved froth under our blades. Sweat stung my eyes. The rink buzzed, lights humming, cold seeping through my pads and still not getting deep enough to numb what needed numbing.
What if Mila’s right?
It wouldn’t be the first time King hands did something brutal and called it necessary.
One wing of the hospital stamped with our name, the other side of town scrubbed clean by Lorne when someone got in the way.
Drew wrapped it in speeches about legacy.
Dad didn’t bother—he just knew which doors opened when you said our name.
Mila had stood under our tree and told me the truth about what her mom did, what she might be hiding. Trust didn’t feel clean. It was bleeding out into someone else’s hands and hoping they didn’t squeeze too hard.
We shifted into scrimmage. I took center, because it was mine. Theo mirrored me on the right, Jax set low on the left, coiled.
The puck dropped. Everything narrowed. Instinct took over.
I won the faceoff, tapped the puck to Theo, then cut hard into open ice, calling for it back.
He threaded it through traffic, and I caught it on my forehand, snapping a shot from the slot.
Crossbar rang. The clang ricocheted off the rafters and back into my chest.
Close. Not enough.
We cycled. Pressure mounted. Chase came in late on a backcheck and clipped Jax’s hip. Jax steadied, and Chase caromed off the boards. The two of them locked eyes, and an entire history burned between them—brothers with a fissure running straight through.
“Move your feet,” I barked at Chase, breath heaving.
“Get off my back,” he threw, voice rough with something that wasn’t anger alone.
“Then cover your lane and I won’t have to.”
He planted his stick across my path, a dare. I should’ve skated around it. But I didn’t. I shoved through. We tangled, sticks clacking, blades snarling, both of us desperate for a fight. Jax cut between us with a shoulder and an expression that promised pain if we didn’t drop it.
Coach’s whistle shrieked. He didn’t say my name—he didn’t have to. Doubt rolled across the guys in a wave.
Our bench squinted down the ice. Stands weren’t full—it wasn’t that kind of practice—but the usual orbit lingered. A cluster of girls near the glass. A handful of parents up top. Elise perched two rows up, perfect profile framed, a phone balanced on her knee.
I made the mistake of meeting her eyes. She tipped her head, smile curved just enough to pass for kind. Not kindness. Inevitability. The look of someone already laying the next landmine.
She didn’t need to say a thing. By the end of the hour, those girls near the glass would carry the rumor for her—and by dinner, it would be polished sharp enough to sting: whispers about Mila’s family, about dirt buried under King legacy, about cracks spreading where no one wanted to look.
Not the truth—just close enough to draw blood.
I drove into the next rush too hot. Puck on my stick, path narrowing, I cut inside a defenseman and felt my edge bite wrong. Skate toe caught. Body pitched. I crashed into the boards hard enough to jar my teeth. The sound went hollow in my skull.
For a second, the ice wavered. Then Jax’s glove landed heavy on my shoulder, steadying. He didn’t push. Didn’t lecture. Just stood there with the weight of a mountain and waited until I got my feet back under me.
“I’ve got it,” I muttered, teeth clenched.
“Then pull your head out,” he returned, low enough for me alone.
We finished the drill, practice closing on the fragile effort of holding together what was already breaking apart.
The locker room stank of wet gear and muscle rub. Metal benches rang as sticks hit. No one talked to me the easy way they used to. Words drifted past without resonating. Theo sat opposite, unlacing his skates in sharp, controlled motions, watching through his lashes. A reminder. A warning.
I peeled tape off with jerky fingers. Pulled my shirt over my head and missed the sleeve on the first try. Everything felt off by one degree, enough to make me clumsy.
Chase reappeared from the showers, hair dripping onto his T-shirt. He stopped in front of me, jaw hard. “You good?” he asked.
It shouldn’t have sounded like a challenge. It did. “I’m here.”
“Doesn’t answer the question.”
“We’re fine,” I lied. “You know it’s not about us—it’s about everything she’s stirred up.”
Chase studied me, a muscle in his cheek ticking, then shook his head. “Doesn’t look that way.”
“Rough afternoon. We’ll deal with it.”
Jax’s gaze flicked between us. Theo rolled a shoulder and went back to his laces. The room held its breath around my answer, and I gave it nothing. Chase nodded once—a ceasefire, not peace—and moved on.
I dressed in silence, dropped my gear bag by the door, and got out before someone forced me to sit and talk.
The hallway outside the rink ran cold and bright, fluorescent lights buzzing at the edges.
The air smelled faintly of coolant and disinfectant—manufactured winter in a town that barely knew the season.
Halfway down, Elise leaned against the wall. She didn’t block my path. She didn’t need to. Her timing was perfect.
“Tough skate?” she murmured, voice spun sugar, eyes sharp.
I kept moving.
“Must be hard,” she continued, “balancing two worlds. Family reputation on one side. A girl who comes with… complications on the other.”
I stopped and turned enough for her to see what lived behind my calm. She smiled, as if she’d won something.
“Watch your tongue,” I told her.
She lifted both hands, innocence painted in French tips and diamonds no high schooler should be wearing. “I’m just sympathizing. Everyone thought the Kings were untouchable. Turns out, you’re…not.”
Not subtle.
I closed the distance, crowding her back against the wall. My voice stayed low, steady. “You better be careful. You’re making the wrong moves. Enough of them, and all your secrets will be laid bare.”
Her smile twitched but didn’t slip.
“If you touch Avery again,” I added, flat as ice, “I’ll end you. This isn’t about me and you,” I added. “It’s about the people you’re using as pawns—Avery, Mila, anyone you think you can break.”
The smile didn’t move, but something in her eyes did—a flare, quick and mean. She leaned in a fraction, enough for me to smell the cloying sweetness of her perfume over the cold.
“Everyone thinks threats solve things,” she breathed. “But the thing about ice, Luke? It just needs a flaw to crack.”
She turned on her heel and floated toward the exit, leaving me with the arena windows and my reflection fractured across them—too many versions of me staring back.
Outside, the night had dropped hard, the kind of dark that made headlights look vicious. I walked until the glare of the rink lights fell behind me and the parking lot opened up to sky. My hands wouldn’t stop flexing.
Mila’s face flashed behind my eyes—the way she looked under the tree when truth hurt, the way her shoulders loosened when she decided to trust me anyway.
Her mother smashing a thumb drive with a hammer.
Darren’s name in a report that felt more akin to a ledger of sins.
Dad’s voice in old memories, low and precise, making violence sound as though it was an order.
If loving her meant exposing what my family buried, what did that make me—a traitor? Or a son who refused to inherit without question?
And if protecting my family meant burying what she’d risked to tell me, what did that make me to her?
I didn’t have answers. Only a promise I’d made under the open sky with salt in the air and her fingers tight in mine.
Partners. No lies. No power plays. We don’t disappear on each other when it gets ugly.
It was ugly now.
I pulled my phone and hovered over my father’s name. The call would go through. He would pick up. He always did when it mattered to the family. He’d tell me the measured version. He’d wrap truth in words that sounded clean.
I set the phone on the hood instead and pressed both palms to the metal until the sting made sense of my body again.
I could hear Coach’s voice in my head from years ago, back when the game was simpler: When the ice gets bad, skate lighter. Keep your weight over your edges. Trust your feet.
Trust your feet. Trust the partner who’d met me under a tree and carried a truth to me even when it might destroy us.
I picked up my phone and opened a new message—not to Dad. Not to Drew.
To Mila: I’m with you. We’ll handle this. Both of us.
I needed to reiterate to her that we were a team. That I had her back no matter what. Her reply came a minute later.
Mila: Okay.
I breathed for what felt like the first time since she’d started talking. The breath didn’t fix anything. It didn’t need to. It reminded me I could still do it.
Darkness stretched in front of me. Elise would keep moving her pieces. Dunn would call someone. Dad would expect answers.
I slid into my car and hit Start. The engine growled, steady and alive.
If loving Mila meant pulling truth into the open, then that was where we were going. If protecting my family meant learning where the rot began, then I would find it. Either way, I was done coasting blind.